West Memphis 3 legal battle requires years of expert work, lot of money

— San Francisco defense attorney Dennis Riordan, who is Echols' lead attorney.

Among his famous clients: home-run king Barry Bonds, accused in a steroids scandal.

— Legal experts from New Mexico and Illinois filed a 24-page brief lobbying for a new trial. They represent the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, based in Albuquerque, and the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth at Northwestern University's School of Law in Chicago.

— Little Rock restaurateurs Capi Peck and Brent Peterson teamed with Echols' wife to form Arkansas Take Action. They organize public events to raise money.

They discovered that a local attorney had alleged that a client, the jury foreman in the trial of Echols and Baldwin, persuaded other jurors to convict based on inadmissible evidence.

— Four advocates who have worked on the case for a decade are: Utah native Grove Pashley, a celebrity photographer; Californian Lisa Fancher, who owns punk rock Frontier Records; and graphic artists, Kathy Bakken, from Kentucky, and Florida native Burk Sauls. They maintain the website wm3.org.

For Arkansas death row inmate Damien Echols, getting a new day in court has taken a mammoth effort by a legion of international supporters.

The movement was ignited when "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" debuted in 1996 at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

Police and prosecutors portrayed Damien Echols, then 18, and his friends, Jason Baldwin, then 16, and Jessie Misskelley Jr., then 17, as devil-worshipping killers who randomly targeted three 8-year-old boys as part of a satanic ritual. Lead investigator Gary Gitchell, a West Memphis police inspector, boasted at the time that the strength of the government's case, on a scale of 1 to 10, was "an 11."

But many viewers of the film felt the evidence against the teens was too weak to merit convictions. Others were convinced that they were innocent.

Echols, who has been on death row for 16 years, says he'd likely be dead if not for the documentary, which was succeeded over the years by protests, petitions, vigils and fundraisers.

His co-defendants, Baldwin and Misskelley, are serving life sentences in the 1993 murders of Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch.

Earlier this month, the Arkansas Supreme Court granted an unusual evidentiary hearing which will give all three men the chance to present new evidence and lobby for a new trial.

On the surface, the legal fight might seem like a process simply afforded by the U.S. Constitution.

But the victory for the defendants' camp relied on an enormous, orchestrated effort -- a legal crusade intertwined with an image campaign.

Aside from years of work by lawyers, detectives, researchers, medical experts and supporters, the fight has required lots of money.

Echols' wife, Lorri Davis, declined to discuss how much has been donated, but she said she receives a flood of e-mails, letters and cards of support from Europe, South America and even the South Pole.

"I haven't heard from China," Davis said during an interview last week. "Asia's not real big yet."

Davis, a self-described recluse, says she forces herself into the spotlight when she believes it can help her husband's cause.

"I can't wait for the time when I can go back and be a hermit and have a private life," she said.

Now she makes appearances at fundraisers and rallies, and conducts interviews for newspapers and TV shows, such as "Larry King Live."

"Damien calls me a swarm of gnats," she said. "You have to keep people interested."

The documentary is slated for screening next week at an arts festival in Berlin, said organizer Jen DeNike.

A month after the May 1993 killings, New York documentary filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky decided to record the trial of the teens who had been charged in the case. As the filming progressed, they began to believe the teens were victims of a rush to judgment.

The release of "Paradise Lost" generated widespread attention and, ultimately, financial support from the public and celebrities including actor Johnny Depp, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and Ozzy Osbourne.

Echols, initially defended by court-appointed attorneys who had little experience in capital cases and little money for experts, now has attorneys in New York and San Francisco, and highly-regarded medical experts, detectives and a public relations guru.

"If they weren't in court and didn't document everything, then the state would have probably gotten away with murdering me," Echols, now 35, said of the documentary during a recent prison interview.

The film also captivated Davis, a New York landscape architect who would become one of Echols' key advocates -- as well as his wife.

Convinced of his innocence, she began exchanging letters with him and later moved to Little Rock to be near him. The two married and Davis continues to play a pivotal role in his defense.

Through her research, she found prominent San Francisco attorney Dennis Riordan, who has represented clients in several capital cases.

Riordan lobbied for DNA testing in the West Memphis case, an expense covered by donations. Due to advancements in the years since the murders, forensic scientists were able to determine in 2005 that hairs found at the scene appeared to match Terry Wayne Hobbs, the stepfather of one of the victims, and David Jacoby, whom Hobbs had visited just before the boys disappeared.

Riordan also sought independent opinions on the victims' cause of death, and consulted with six medical experts including Dr. Michael Baden, former chief medical examiner of New York City, and Texas pathologist Dr. Vincent DiMaio.

All six experts concluded the boys were beaten and tossed into the muddy drainage ditch, and weren't stabbed or molested as the prosecution maintains. The consultants said animals tore at the victims' bodies after death.

The key to the 1994 convictions was the confession of Misskelley, who was described as borderline mentally retarded, and who later recanted his confession.

The findings by the defense's experts conflict with details in Misskelley's confession.

Davis also found New York investigator Jay Salpeter.

Salpeter, a former cop, had teamed with public relations expert Lonnie Soury to free a New York man they insist was wrongfully convicted of killing his parents.

Martin Tankleff was freed in 2007 after serving 17 years in prison. Tankleff, a teen at the time of the crime, gave a confession but later said he was manipulated by police.

In the case of the West Memphis Three, Soury and Salpeter created a tip line for information on the case.

As a result, a West Memphis woman and her two daughters came forward in 2007 and gave statements under oath that they last saw the victims with Hobbs at 6:30 p.m. the day they disappeared. Hobbs had previously claimed he never saw the boys that afternoon.

Hobbs maintains his innocence and has never been considered a suspect by police.

A date has not yet been set for the evidentiary hearing, which will be conducted by a local judge, who will decide whether to grant a new trial before a jury.

Atty. Gen. Dustin McDaniel has not discussed the new DNA evidence, but said in a statement: "My office intends to fulfill its constitutional responsibility to defend the jury verdicts in this case."

Soury is organizing the national advocacy efforts for the defense, securing coverage by The New York Times, CNN and "48 Hours."

"You need a public campaign, especially in high-profile cases, to change the hearts and minds of people so there's a public outcry, a public demand."